National Industrial Security Program

The National Industrial Security Program, or NISP, is the nominal authority in the United States for managing the needs of private industry to access classified information.[1]

The NISP was established in 1993 by Executive Order 12829.[2] The National Security Council nominally sets policy for the NISP, while the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office is nominally the authority for implementation. Under the ISOO, the Secretary of Defense is nominally the Executive Agent, but the NISP recognizes four different Cognizant Security Agencies, all of which have equal authority: the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.[3]

Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency administers the NISP on behalf of the Department of Defense and 34 other federal agencies.

NISP Operating Manual (DoD 5220.22-M)

A major component of the NISP is the NISP Operating Manual, also called NISPOM, or DoD 5220.22-M. The NISPOM establishes the standard procedures and requirements for all government contractors, with regards to classified information. As of 2017, the current NISPOM edition is dated 28 Feb 2006. Chapters and selected sections of this edition are:[4]

Data sanitization

DoD 5220.22-M is sometimes cited as a standard for sanitization to counter data remanence. The NISPOM actually covers the entire field of government–industrial security, of which data sanitization is a very small part (about two paragraphs in a 141-page document).[5] Furthermore, the NISPOM does not actually specify any particular method. Standards for sanitization are left up to the Cognizant Security Authority. The Defense Security Service provides a Clearing and Sanitization Matrix (C&SM) which does specify methods.[6] As of the June 2007 edition of the DSS C&SM, overwriting is no longer acceptable for sanitization of magnetic media; only degaussing or physical destruction is acceptable.[7]

References

  1. ^ Manual reissues DoD 5220.22-M, "National Industrial Security Program Operating. 2006. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.180.8813.
  2. ^ "Executive Order 12829". FAS website. Retrieved 2007-04-01.
  3. ^ "NISP Brochure" (PDF). DSS. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-04-20. Retrieved 2007-04-01. (59 KB)
  4. ^ "Download NISPOM". DSS. Retrieved 2010-11-10.
  5. ^ DoD (2006-02-28). "National Industrial Security Program Operating Manual (NISPOM)" (PDF). DSS. pp. 8–3–1. Retrieved 2013-03-07. (1.92 MB)
  6. ^ "DSS Clearing & Sanitization Matrix" (PDF). DSS. 2007-06-28. Retrieved 2011-04-26. (98 KB)
  7. ^ NIST (2014-12-18). Unrelated to NISP or NISPOM, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Computer Security Division Released Special Publication 800-88 Revision 1, Guidelines for Media Sanitization, 18 December 2014. Retrieved from http://csrc.nist.gov/news_events/news_archive/news_archive_2014.html#dec18.